First, it’s not entirely clear what the nature of the story is. Is it a Call Story, of which there are lots in the Bible? The biblical storytellers frequently offer us tales of those whom God has called, so that we might be ready to hear the call ourselves. In some Bibles this morning’s story is designated “the calling of the first disciples”. The fact that it is paired with also-quite-interesting Call of Isaiah, our first lesson today, would back this assumption.
But maybe it’s a miracle story? Other Bibles introduce it as “The Miraculous Catch”, and it IS that. Let’s agree that Luke has done a clever job of combining both a call, and a miracle. The next important thing, in my mind, is how different Luke’s chronology is from the other three New Testament gospels, and I think it’s interesting to think about why. Matthew, Mark, and John all begin with Jesus’ baptism, Mark and Matthew describe Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness and describe him introducing his ministry by declaring that “the realm of God has come near”, but after that, in all three, Jesus begins his ministry of outreach by explicitly inviting (“calling”) disciples to join him. Not Luke. In the third gospel, after Jesus’ baptism and temptation, Jesus begins his ministry on his own by teaching in the synagogues, and he immediately begins to acquire a following. In the last two weeks we’ve heard the story of the dramatic incident at the synagogue in Nazareth that starts out well but soon has Jesus’ boyhood neighbors running him out of town. In Luke’s story, Jesus then proceeds to cleanse a man with an unclean spirit, heal Simon Peter’s mother-in-law (though there is no mention of any particular relationship between Jesus and Simon Peter,) and to travel out of Galilee and into Judea, teaching and healing bodies and spirits and increasingly, drawing crowds. AND IT IS ONLY THEN that today’s incident occurs, ultimately resulting in Jesus’ invitation to Simon Peter, James, and John to come with him with the opportunity of “catching people”. We assume that as the gospel writers began producing their accounts of the “good news story” of Jesus Christ during the years of the developing early church, decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection, there was lots of material in circulation about Jesus. We assume that each of them drew from that material and made choices to construct a narrative that conveyed what they felt was important. Why did Luke present Jesus as initiating his ministry on his own, and then inviting a community of followers, friends, and (as Luke describes them in chapter 6) apostles almost as an afterthought? You may have other ideas about this, but I think Jesus recognized, weeks into a solo ministry tour, that he couldn’t do it on his own. I think that he not only discovered that crowd management was becoming an issue, but I suspect that Jesus discovered a need for companionship and community in the work of preaching the Realm of God and of caring for the needs of God’s children. Later on, as he sent the disciples out to minister on their own, he sent them in pairs. And the lesson of the importance of sharing the work of ministry is equally true for us. The third interesting thing I want to observe about this story is the way in which Luke shapes this introduction of Simon Peter, who was the undoubtedly the most important leader in the very early church. Throughout all of the gospels we come to know Peter as not only the first-called, but as a complex, passionate, and yet really fallible human being. He was at times the most faithful of Jesus’ community, being the first to openly name Jesus as the Messiah, but the strength of his own certainties caused Peter to get it wrong as often as he got it right. You can imagine that members in the early church must have been eager and fascinated to hear about the origins of Simon Peter’s relationship with Jesus, and this morning’s story is the way Luke filled in those gaps for them. What’s intriguing to me is that Luke, rather than depicting Simon Peter as eager and decisive, showed his vulnerable side. The fishing business of Simon Peter and his colleagues served multiple purposes: it not only fed their families, but provided their livelihood, feeding the community who purchased their catch. It was hard, physical work, and times (such as the night preceding this morning’s story) when there was little or no catch would have been distressing as well as disheartening. But despite what must have been his fatigue and discouragement, when the new teacher (who Simon would have known to have helped his mother-in-law) asked his assistance in being transported out onto the lake to get some space from the crowds, Simon was willing to be helpful. After the teaching was done, however, Jesus’ instruction to the fishers to head further out to drop their nets was more than Simon wanted to take on. “We’ve already tried, and they’re just not biting. Besides, we’ve washed the nets. There’s no point in trying again.” But Jesus insisted, and so Simon complied. Was he hopeful, do you think, or just too tired to argue? As Luke tells us, the catch was just crazy. There were enough fish to break the nets and threaten that the boats would sink. (I like to imagine that all of those fish were magnetically drawn to Jesus, just as the crowds on the lakeshore were, and were practically jumping into the boat to be close to the power Jesus radiated.) And the situation frightened Simon Peter. He had been impressed by the new rabbi earlier, but he was not comfortable with what he had just witnessed. He wanted some distance. His anxiety suddenly made him aware of his own unworthiness. Probably he felt that he’d be better off with the unpredictability of the fishing business than he was with this guy who seemed to cause such unnatural things to happen. He exclaimed “Go away from me, for I am a sinful man.” Jesus understood Simon Peter’s fear, and offered not only reassurance, but the opportunity to be part of something bigger: “From now on, you will be catching people.” So, finally, we come down to the place we always come down to. What does this story have to say to us? It’s not too hard to see some obvious connections. Like Simon Peter, we’re tired out by things that are hard and uncertain. For Simon Peter the strain was largely physical; for us, in the last couple of years, it’s more emotional and spiritual. When you think about not only the pandemic, but also the increasing cultural divide in not only our nation, but the world, as well as the frowing environmental environmental crisis, we are in a hard place. A lot of the things we’ve been doing don’t seem to be getting us anywhere. We feel like we’re going through the motions, maybe, and repeating familiar pattern because we don’t have a better idea. I’m grateful for an observation I read about today’s gospel in a commentary by New Testament scholar Ronald Allen that has rung a chord for me. Allen points out that bathos, the Greek word for depth that’s used when Jesus instructs Simon Peter to “Put out into deep waters”, is associated. Where it’s used elsewhere in Hebrew scriptures, in Hebrew scriptures with the danger and chaos of the primordial seas.* Jesus encourages Simon Peter to dip the nets into the deeper, more dangerous and perhaps more unpredictable waters of the Sea of Galilee – the better-known name for Lake Gennesaret - rather than steering away from them. And it is when they did so that Simon and his companions experienced God’s unexpected abundance – a catch that was more than they were ready for or knew how to handle. Might this be a useful metaphor for us to apply to the challenges of our own lives? How often do we keep doing things in the same safe way we’ve been doing them but which is no longer providing what we are looking for? How frequently do we avoid the depths because there’s too much unknown there - they are too frightening, too unpredictable? We can listen to Jesus’ words to Simon Peter: “Do not be afraid.” As we’ve observed in relation to another sea-going tale in the gospels, we can afford to risk because we’ve got Jesus in the boat with us. Our God provides a world of abundant (if unpredictable) riches. Ours is the opportunity to dig in, and who knows what we’ll pull up. *Ronald J Allen, Commentary on Luke 5:1-11, February 10 2019, workingpreacher.org
Our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, refers to us as “the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement”. The tree off the movement, to follow Bishop Michael’s metaphor, is vast and complicated. Christianity is the largest religious tradition in the world in terms of numbers of adherents.
We might wonder at why the Jesus movement has split itself into so many different branches and twigs, but it is understandable that especially when it comes to beliefs and practices that we hold dear, that give direction to the way we live our lives and that we’re both intellectually and emotionally invested in, it can be hard to compromise. From the time that Jesus was still with his disciples, disagreements and disputes arose, and the New Testament records the fact that differences within and between congregations were very much a part of life from the earliest days of the church. In the fourth and fifth centuries, disagreement about belief, practice, and authority had become concerning enough that Christian leaders gathered in a series of councils with the goal of hammering out their differences. Some points of consensus emerged about what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. The creed we say weekly was formulated at the First Council of Nicea in 325, and certain schools of belief were declared to be heresies at Constantinople and Ephesus. As you might anticipate, however, concord or compromise could NOT be reached on some of the early church’s disagreements, and the first significant formal instances of separation between traditions took place, to be followed, over the centuries, by many more. For our purposes today, the important point of differentiation leading to what is now the Episcopal branch was the Protestant reformation of the 16th century. At the time, Christian Europe was united under the authority of the Bishop of Rome, the Pope. In 1517 Martin Luther, a German teacher and monk, published a document he called “Disputation on the Power of Indulgences” or 95 Theses that he was inviting other church leaders to debate with him. As you’re undoubtedly aware, Luther wasn’t subtle: he posted his document on the door of the church in Wittenburg. Luther’s thinking and action was radical because the Catholic Church of the time was extremely dogmatic: its teachings – especially if they came from the Pope himself – were to be accepted without question and its practices followed to the letter, or one could expect dire consequences in the afterlife. Luther’s fundamental disagreement with the Church was that it had set itself up as a necessary intermediary between the believer and God. The faithful needed to purchase forgiveness of their sins by payments to the Church and neither the Bible nor the words of worship itself were in the languages that ordinary people spoke or could read. Luther, and reformers like Calvin and Zwingli who followed his actions in publicly challenging Catholic teachings, wanted believers to understand that they have an independent relationship with God for which they are responsible, without the mediation of the Church or its clergy. The English Reformation that resulted in our “branch of the Jesus movement” was more political than theological. We’re all familiar with the sad story of King Henry VIII of England and his six wives. Henry was fundamentally a devout Catholic and, in the early part of his reign, was named “Defender of the Faith” by Pope Leo X for his staunch support of papal supremacy. His failure to produce a male heir became a driving force in his life in the second decade of his reign and his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, however. Pope Clement VII refused to approve annulment of Henry’s marriage in order for Henry to remarry. Henry and his advisors, including Thomas Cranmer (of whom we’ll hear more), eventually engineered a parliamentary act denying the authority of the Pope over the English Church and identifying the English monarch as “Supreme Head” of the Church in doctrinal and legal matters, opening the way for Henry to obtain a divorce. The Church of England was, in he following decades, actually pretty ambivalent about the ideas of Luther and the other reformers, and and the way the church developed was motivated by both religious and political concerns. Some influential thinkers and political advisors (including Henry’s second wife Anne Boleyn) were genuinely sympathetic to the ideas of the Protestants, while others remained deeply attached to both the theology and liturgical practices of Catholicism. This ambivalence in the English Church leads to what I want to identify as the first significant characteristic of Anglicanism, but before we go there, let’s look briefly at the way authority and governance in our part of the Church is organized. The Anglican Communion includes all churches throughout the world that choose to affiliate themselves with the Church of England, and all, to be truthful about it, spring from the centuries of colonization practiced by the British Empire. Coming out of the Reformation, Anglicanism retained (from Catholicism) an episcopal structure. Bishops have responsibility for and authority over priests, deacons, and laypeople in matters of practice. This is why Heather and I ask Bishop Doug for permission when we want to use liturgies that don’t come from the prayer book, and when, early in the pandemic, Bishop Doug communicated that Episcopal Bishops had agreed that “remote consecration”, setting bread and wine in individual homes for consecration during virtual worship, was not in keeping established understanding and tradition in the Episcopal Church, we complied. The Head Bishop (or Primate) of each member branch of the Anglican Communion, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primate of the Church of England, is a spiritual leader and frequently acts as a spokesperson for the denomination, but does not have authority over other bishops as the Pope does in Roman Catholicism. To be “in communion” with other Anglican churches is like being in a family: we don’t always agree with one another, but we commit to remaining in communication and (as an ideal, not always realized,) we don’t attempt to impose our own understanding and ways of doing things on one another. In the last several decades the Episcopal Church has often been an outlier in the Anglican Communion as a result of our decisions to ordain women and to open the sacraments including ordination and marriage to sisters and brothers who identify as GLBTQ+. So on to what is really important: What are the principals and characteristics that distinguish us from the many other branches and twigs of the Jesus movement? I’d like to touch on three. 1) We are characterized as being a via media, a middle way between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches and the most reformed of the Protestant denominations. This principal springs from such Reformation leaders as Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry, who wanted to embrace the thinking of the reformers without, in effect, throwing the baby out with the bathwater in abandoning all Roman Catholic thinking. This via media sensibility is undoubtedly why so many people raised in the Catholic tradition find their way to the Episcopal Church. Our liturgy and devotional practices and often, our theology, remain close to that of the Catholic Church. I personally think that part of the genius of the Anglican way is that the via media nature of the denomination embraces a “big tent” approach: for the most part (and again, we sometimes fail at this,) we allow for differences in emphasis and practice according to personal preference and local custom. Some Anglicans pray with rosaries and icons, many don’t. Congregations on the “high church” end of the spectrum use incense and bells in worship, many do not. Some call their clergy “Reverend” or “Pastor” and others prefer “Father” or “Mother”. You don’t see such diversity and tolerance in all denominations. 2) A second characteristic of Anglicanism is closely related. Richard Hooker of the late 16th century is generally credited with coming up with the image of the “three-legged stool” on which the via media rests, even though the metaphor as we use it today really comes from the 19th century Oxford Movement. The concept of the three-legged stool is that Anglican doctrine is based on three things – scripture, tradition, and reason, and that all three must be taken into consideration in order for the stool – the teaching and practice of the Church – to be in balance. Some denomination favor one or another of the three: “if we don’t find something in the Bible, it shouldn’t be part of Christian practice”; or, “we’ve always done it that way, so it must be what God wants us to do”. Anglicans insist, coming from the work of the Reformers, that the Bible contains “all things necessary to salvation”2 Like the Catholic churches, we maintain deep respect for the wisdom of longstanding tradition, and are very cautious about precipitous change. But we are also committed to the exercise of human reason, of critical analysis, of logical consistency and of implications. If what the Bible and tradition suggest are not consistent with the lived experience of the people, we’ve got to keep working on thinking it through. 3) The third defining characteristic and foundational principle of Anglicanism that I want to mention this morning is reflected in yet another churchy phrase from the latin: Lex orandi, lex credendi. Loosely translated, “the law of prayer is the law of belief” or better, “You are what you pray.” Words are important to Episcopalians because we understand that “prayer, belief, and action are intimately tied together.”3 Episcopalians, as do Anglicans worldwide, use a common prayer book. Thomas Cranmer (again) oversaw and in fact wrote many of the words of the first Book of Common Prayer, published in 1549. It was the first time English-speaking people had a common text guiding them, in the language they spoke, in their relationship with God. Many of the prayers were translations in (then) contemporary language of ancient prayers dating back many centuries, and thus, served to root Anglicans deeply in the Church’s traditions. We continue to use many of those 16th century words in our prayers today. The language we use in prayer shapes the way we understand God, ourselves, and the world. The words we say when praying together don’t just express what we believe, they determine what we believe. And in shaping our beliefs, they determine the choices we make. I am glad to be an Episcopalian. Having grown up in the tradition I haven’t known any other way, so my assessment isn’t exactly unbiased. I love the rich liturgical practices of the Church, and our embrace of symbol. I love our appreciation of language. I’ve seen the denomination evolve, in my lifetime, to be much more mission-focused than it used to be, and to become much more inclusive. I’m grateful that in nurturing and supporting my relationship with God in Jesus Christ I am encouraged to think and to formulate my own perspectives. What do you appreciate about the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement, and how would you also like to change it?
By Rev. Dr. Molly Scherm
I think that the cross is probably the deepest and hardest mystery that the Christian faith asks us to take on. On the surface, of course, it’s not hard at all: Jesus of Nazareth was executed by the imperial powers of the Roman Empire with the collaboration of religious authorities of his own community. Not very complicated. Where the mystery comes in is the conviction for those who follow him (from the early days of the Jesus Movement, in fact,) that the cross, the execution of Jesus, is where the redemption of humankind is made complete. The mystery is the notion that we are saved by Jesus’ death on the cross. Most of us learned to understand this – that Jesus’ death on the cross “saved us” and transformed our relationship with God - in a way that many of us can no longer affirm. You’ve heard me reflect on this before, but I think it’s one of those things that is worth returning to. I know that I continue to work at “unlearning” many of the “truths” I was taught in growing up. Saint Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, declared that “Christ died for our sins”. Certainly, Jesus died because of the sinfulness of those who sentenced him and supported that sentence. He died because sinful human beings sought to protect their own privilege and authority against the threat that his popularity seemed to represent. Over the course of time, Paul’s notion of Jesus “dying for our sins” evolved into a complex theological doctrine in which Jesus’ death came to be seen as having been required by God the Father. The religious doctrine we were taught maintains that Jesus’ death on the cross served, in effect, as the payment for the sins of the world. (This language is still reflected in our liturgies.) This “substitutionary atonement” theology maintains that humankind was held hostage by our own sins until Jesus, in effect, gave up his life on our behalf, in our place. Such an idea – that God required sacrifice of God’s beloved child in order to forgive human sin – doesn’t sit right for many of us. It’s not consistent with the God Jesus described in his parables, a God who longs for relationship, who seeks out the lost and forgives, recklessly. The notion that violence was the necessary and pre-ordained means of human salvation does not ring true. Theologian Marcus Borg points out that the Greek root of the word “martyr” means “witness”. “A martyr, or “witness,”” Borg observes, “is killed because she or he stands for something – which in early Christianity meant standing for God and standing against the powers that created a world of injustice and violence.”* The powers of the world are still enacting crucifixions,
The powers of the world still crucify, and our efforts to stand in opposition so often feel like shoveling sand against the tide of human selfishness and greed – both within ourselves and in the social and political world outside ourselves. And yet we are still left with that conviction – articulated by Paul and central to the faith of the Church – that it is the cross that saves us. Along with others, I have come to see that the cross was not required to change God, but to change us. Jesus’ death provides us the means to face up to our deepest failings.
One of the mysteries of the cross is that it is the place where God’s grace meets and coexists with human violence.
The old hymn puts it this way: See from His head, His hands, His feet, Sorrow and love flow mingled down! Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown? As we contemplate the cross today we see the sorrow, the brokenness. We are in the fortunate position of knowing that the sin and the brokenness are not the final word. The power of love gave Jesus the courage to submit to the worst the world had to offer. May that same love and courage inspire and transform us as we, too, join Jesus in the work of building God’s reign justice and peace. Rev. Dr. Molly Scherm
This week Heather and I went through another round of reflecting on and adapting the way in which we at Saints James and Andrew are worshipping God. The corona virus pandemic has changed our lives in so many ways, and among these is the way in which we function as the Church, the Body of Christ.
These last couple of months, figuring out how to move forward in a new set of circumstances, has stretched us is good ways, even as they have been painful and often exhausting. I think this is true for other aspects of our lives, and it has certainly been true for us as the Church. Much of our concern as clergy has been around the outward and practical aspects of adapting worship: Which media platform gives the best audio-visual results? What do we have the technological capacity to use? What’s going to be most accessible and comfortable for our members? One thing we didn’t anticipate, as we embarked on this crazy and unsolicited corona virus adventure, was the degree to which managing worship in a pandemic was going to raise deep and complicated questions of theology – for us, and for the larger Church. Beyond thinking about the outward and practical aspects of offering worship in a pandemic, clergy in the Episcopal Church, at least, have also been forced to think about how we understand the very nature of our worship: How critical, really, is the centrality of the Eucharist in our worship? What elements in the way we worship are necessary to make Eucharist happen? Whose prayer matters in the Great Thanksgiving? Does separation in space matter? A few days ago we sent a message to you over email and social media to let you know about changes to our worship that we are beginning this morning, as a result of a Directive we received this week from Bishop Doug. I hope you’ve had a chance to read it. In it we wanted to offer explanation of why we are making changes in our worship yet again. During this service this morning, we also wanted to take the opportunity to dig a bit into the theological challenges that underlie these changes. So, please, consider this to be “Instructed Eucharist, Chapter two”. It is also an interesting case study in the way the Episcopal Church functions. When the pandemic took hold and social distancing and stay-at-home directives were first issued, it was up to individual parishes to figure out how to worship; our first considerations, as I mentioned, were practical. Bishop Doug encouraged us to be pastoral in considering the needs of the community. We adopted the practice of “virtual communion” for this parish, inviting members to receive the eucharistic bread and wine at home with the conviction that God would bless and be fully present in that bread and wine even though we were separated in space. Honestly, we knew that this practice was a bit “out there”, and was not something that had ever been given official sanction by the Church. We were not alone in taking this direction, either in the Diocese or in the national Church. Concern and controversy about Virtual Communion quickly surfaced, as not all of the clergy of the church shared the view that Virtual Communion was an approach that ought to be accepted in the Episcopal Church at this time. (Virtual Communion was not the only practice drawing attention, by the way: other creative liturgical approaches were likewise up for debate.) Columns, blogs, podcasts and commentaries blossomed. Heather and I followed the conversation closely. This week Bishop Doug informed us that, after considerable prayer and reflection, he was offering the Pastoral Directive that while we are unable to gather for worship as we would wish, we can practice any of four liturgical options. Virtual Communion is not among those four. Receiving the Directive and figuring out what different approach to take actually provided a wonderful opportunity for the clergy and wardens of the parish to talk with one another about what we feel – as individuals, and on behalf of members of the parish – is most important and most meaningful for our worship. It wasn’t even remotely difficult to reach consensus on how we wanted to go forward, and so, as our letter explained, for the forseeable future under the quarantine, we will worship through a combination of Morning Prayer and Eucharist with Spiritual Communion. So why is Virtual Communion not authorized? What’s wrong with it? Basically, theologians have put forth the reasoning that physical gathering of the community of faith is critical to the celebration of the Eucharist. Embedded in this reasoning is the theological reasoning that it is the combined prayer of the people and the priest praying “in one voice”, that constitutes the Eucharist. You’ll recall that in an earlier instructed Eucharist we spoke about the fact that it is through “the Great Amen” that comes at the end of the eucharistic prayer - which offers praise and thanksgiving, which invokes the presence of the Holy Spirit to bless the bread and the wine so that we might receive the presence of Christ – completes the prayer and confirms the unity of the Church in praying it. Bishop Doyle of Texas points out that “The Episcopal Church has always held that the Eucharist is not an act done by the priest and received by the people; it is an act in which the Body of Christ, otherwise divided and separate from one another, are reunited with one another and with God.” The theology of the Church, according to this reasoning, is that this kind of union and unified prayer simply cannot take place from a dozen – or a hundred – separate living rooms. A second concern raised in relation to a Virtual Communion liturgy is the fact that the way we pray affects what we believe. Those who have taken Episcopal 101 will remind us of the maxim lex orandi, lex credendi: the words we say and the things we do in worship shape the way we think and understand our relationship with one another and with God. A potential implication of embracing Virtual Communion is that, in the words of Bishop Mark Eddington, “We’re saying that people don’t need to gather, and that community is second to individual preference.” Again, from Bishop Doyle: When we hold to our Eucharistic theology, we are reminded that we are not meant for individual flourishing alone. We are meant for communal flourishing. We are not a group of individuals gathered to get our own needs met. Instead, we understand the corporate grace of salvation and the reuniting of God's created kin and family. We come to understand that without us, others may not receive what is needed. It is an awakening to the idea that when we are not present with each other, we are not whole. To be truthful with you, while I respect the reasoning in all of these arguments and am moved by the sentiments, I don’t think we were wrong in adopting Virtual Communion. Equally compelling arguments in support of the practice have been offered by theologians for whom I have profound respect. What I AM fully persuaded by is that we are part of a bigger whole – playing on a team, and not just doing what makes sense to us as a particular parish. It is a hallmark and, I think, the genius of the Anglican way that we discuss, and compromise, and work things through together. We’ve lived through this before - in relation to the ordination of women and the ordination and blessing of marriages of gay/lesbian/bi/transgender and queer persons. Frustrating as it sometimes is, we in the Episcopal Church don’t make quick or facile decisions. We believe that the Spirit speaks through the Church (and not into my own individual ear) and so we pray and discern and listen. And this frequently requires patience. As it does now as we at James and Andrew transition to another liturgical practice. I absolutely believe that engaging in Spiritual Communion and Morning Prayer will provide us new insights and new spiritual growth. We need to open our hearts to the mysterious ways in which God continues to speak, among us. Heather and I so much appreciate the support and patience that all of you have shown as we slog through this together. It will not be forever: we will be breaking bread together again in one place, praising God together, singing the music we love together, in God’s good time. In the name of the living God. |
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